Captain's Log: New Trek Buzz

It looks as though the new Star Trek feature is attracting a lot of ticket buyers this weekend. The reviews seem pretty positive, though I've avoided reading them in detail until after I've seen the movie on Sunday. Today I walked past the theatre where I'll see it in our college town, and noticed one of the students in a small line to see the first evening show. He looked both excited and embarrassed, and it reminded me what it's been like to be a Star Trek fan these past few years: weird. I admit I've been surprised by the articles and reviews that begin by acknowledging how important Star Trek and what it stands for have been. If this movie remains popular, we may have to get used to Star Trek being an acceptable enthusiasm again.

Among the many recent non-review articles was another one comparing President Obama to Spock, this one by Jeff Greenwald, author of the TNG nonfiction book, Future Perfect, and one of the panelists on my Soul of Star Trek panel at the 40th anniversary convention in Seattle. Those who doubted that Obama is a Trek fan, take note of these two stories: the report that President Obama wants to screen the new Trek film at the White House, and an interview with Leonard Nimoy who was an Obama supporter: he said that he was with a number of people waiting to meet candidate Obama, and when Obama spotted Nimoy, the future President immediately flashed the Vulcan salute. Not easy to do unless you've practiced it. I mean, that's logical, right?

By the way, I've taken note of the comments left here about the movie. I'm waiting until I see it to respond.

With the new movie opening this week, the Star Trek story universe created by these actors and this crew will end. In the posts below, my pre-opening thoughts on the new movie, and in these last hours when this is still the crew of the Starship Enterprise, a tribute to the original cast and their final movie together, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered County.

Before the End...

If it wasn't clear before, recent interviews with Leonard Nimoy and the screenwriters of the new Star Trek movie have made it absolutely certain: the Star Trek story universe that began in the 1960s will end with the new movie. The canon is now closed.

Though it could be said that the action in the new movie is a time travel story generated in the post-Nemesis 24th century, these interviews indicate that future movies will take place in a different timeline--a different story universe, with characters whose names we know, with similarities but also with different characteristics and events.

The Star Trek universe we have known so far is finished. Even the new movie's title--just "Star Trek"--appropriates ownership, and declares that the new regime has taken control. Rather than extend the existing Trek universe in time and space, this film will cannibalize Star Trek's past. This is smart commercially: the characters are pre-sold icons. It may also turn out to be integral to re-enlivening Star Trek as a popular storytelling vehicle. We'll see. But it inevitably will change and even destroy aspects of Star Trek's past.

In reading some of the interviews and reviews during this final spasm of immense hype, it's possible to get the impression that fans who have qualms or are queasy about this can be disdained and dismissed as angry, bitter losers. That's neither generous nor accurate. People who care about Star Trek have legitimate concerns.

Because this is a greater change than Star Trek has ever experienced before. It's a greater separation than the original series from the Next Generation (new cast and century, but Gene Roddenberry and some of his original co-creators choosing and shaping.) It's greater than Harv Bennett and Nick Meyer changing the film series (partly because GR was still a force, but mostly because the original cast was there, actively maintaining continuity in character and meaning, even when Bennett and Meyer wanted to change things.)

I believe it's appropriate to emphasize the separation now. After I've seen the movie, maybe I'll be emphasizing the connections. We'll see.

By starting again with these classic characters, this movie also reinforces Star Trek as a mythology. The texts of Homer were not the only tales of brave Ulysses. More stories were created and told afterwards, and there are many variants of every myth. Various superheroes with origins in comics and novels have gone through this as well. This process has always been part of Trek, since the first fan fictions and commercial novels that weren't based on the TV episodes. The fan films--the independent films--that cast other actors as these classic characters really paved the way for the new feature. There will be no new canon, no new canonized Star Trek.

But more than some mythologies (from ancient times or comic books), Star Trek has always had a distinct core, a vision that may be ambiguous, but is at least emotionally clear enough to have rallied millions around it. How this film and those that follow will be regarded in relationship to what has come before depends in large part, not only on whether the new regime maintains the spirit of what came before, but whether they have anything new to say to make the vision relevant to today.


Let me make my position clear, before seeing the movie. I am neither "for" nor "against" this movie. My concerns on this site are not commercial. I don't cover or care about Burger King promotions or toys. ( That doesn't mean I'm against Star Trek stuff either--as I write these words I happen to be wearing a Starfleet Academy cap.)

What I care about and try to write about is the soul of Star Trek, and what Star Trek can illuminate about the soul of the future, especially the qualities and attitudes needed now to make a better future. Yes, it's a movie, and is to enjoyed and judged as a movie. But it is not "just" a movie. If that were so, we wouldn't have been talking about and caring about Star Trek for more than forty years.

Judging from the preview snippets and the visuals and music on the movie's official site one effect this film may well have--at least temporarily--is to make previous Trek seem slow and thin, outmoded and possibly even irrelevant. So before that happens, I feel it's both an honor and a duty to pay tribute to what has gone before, and some of the people who made it so--specifically, those who were there at the beginning, and who, for a few more hours at least, are the sole proprietors of the characters they created, in the last story they created together.

Star Trek VI—and a Tribute to the Original Cast

Does this sound familiar? After the last Star Trek feature under-performed, Paramount executives decided to reboot the franchise with a new young cast in a movie about young Kirk and Spock. Kirk would be brash and rebellious, Spock cold and arrogant. They would clash, come together and become young heroes in a climactic space battle. It would be Top Gun in outer space. It wouldn’t be your father’s Star Trek.

Right, but this was 1989, and the box office disappointment was Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. After considering a proposal for this Starfleet Academy movie, Paramount was persuaded to instead celebrate Star Trek’s 25th anniversary with Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, the last movie to feature the entire original cast.

So perhaps it’s fitting that on the eve of the new movie with a new cast that will play these now mythic characters, we pay tribute to the original cast and remember their last big screen adventure.

Star Trek VI continued several Star Trek traditions. For instance, it had a story dealing with contemporary issues. Series producers Gene Roddenberry and Gene Coon created the Klingons as, among other things, a parallel to the Soviet Union in the 1960s. So this film’s executive producer, Leonard Nimoy, and its director, Nicholas Meyer, developed a story that dealt metaphorically with events almost as they were happening, while the Soviet Union’s new leader pursued a more peaceful relationship with the West, before the USSR dissolved completely into separate countries.

I won’t go into detail here about the real world parallels and specific line references--I've already done that elsewhere on this site, with more detail also on the movie's story and backstory. But the outlines of history repeat themselves, so this movie’s themes remain important: the difficulties yet the need to get beyond enmities, and the dangers of prejudices that demonize an entire race or people. Championing diversity and equality was a Star Trek stand from the beginning.

Director Nick Meyer again placed his personal filmmaking stamp on the style (including bits from classic movies: in his DVD commentary he admits that the warden’s speech to new prisoners on the Rura Penthe ice planet was visually copied from a similar scene in Bridge On the River Kwai. What he doesn’t say is that the speech itself is also taken from that movie almost word for word.)

But for all the Cold War metaphors and the Shakespearian actors under Klingon makeup quoting Shakespeare, Meyer kept the movie moving forward with the driving plot of a murder mystery: Who Killed Chancellor Gorkon?

Meyer did this before: in directing Time After Time and writing The Seven Percent Solution, he used established and historical characters (H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper, Freud and Sherlock Holmes) in crime stories. This time he used Star Trek characters: while Captain Kirk puzzles things out in action, Spock remains on the Enterprise to become Sherlock Holmes (even quoting Holmes as “an ancestor of mine.”)

[continued after photos]

"Are you kidding?"

"All things must end." Fascinating.

Memories and Moments

The guest stars were extraordinary: stage and screen veterans Christopher Plummer and David Warner, another young actress playing a Vulcan before she became famous (Kim Cattrall as Valeris, following Kirstie Alley as Saavik), and Iman, whose confident performance matched perfectly opposite William Shatner, plus both new and familiar supporting actors. Rosanna DeSoto--the feminist Klingon with a Canadian accent--played an important role as Gorkon’s daughter.

But today we focus on the original cast. They all got to play their characters again beyond the time frame of this film (in Generations, in another Trek series, or in independent films like New Voyages and Of Gods and Men.) But this is the last time they are together.

They all had their memorable moments. There was the surprise of seeing Captain Sulu in command of the starship Excelsior, where George Takei’s commanding voice finally gets to issue some commands. Then a sweet bit of repartee with Grace Lee Whitney as Rand, when she asks whether they should report the explosion on the Klingon moon. “Are you kidding?” Sulu says, as only this Sulu can.

James Doohan had some breezy lines, and one indelible image. It’s the coda on the scene of the Enterprise leaving space dock—and these Star Trek movies properly start only when the Enterprise begins its mission. There’s a fleeting image of Scotty in engineering, beaming like a proud father as the Enterprise gets underway.

Scotty and Chekov make key discoveries in solving the mystery (and an overconfident Chekov has a comic moment when he tries to match the killer’s gravity boot to a crewman with webbed feet.) Uhura, Chekov and Scotty and do another comic scene of dubious credibility but it’s funny anyway, as they page through huge Klingon language dictionaries to fool a Klingon outpost.

DeForest Kelley has probably his most sustained sequence in the movies, as Kirk’s sole companion in trying to revive Gorkon, then in capture, trial, captivity and escape. We get his rueful irony, pride and poignancy—and his priceless take when Iman visits Kirk in his bunk.

But as usual the strongest character arcs belong to Kirk and Spock. As the movie begins, we see Captain Kirk pretty much in the same mood as we will meet him in the Nexus in Star Trek: Generations: touchy, sardonic if not cynical, a little weary of saving the galaxy. The entire bridge crew is a bit weary and near retirement. Aging and mortality, and what they tell us about what we value, were themes in nearly every Star Trek feature. (For those who now say their ages were unrealistic--they wouldn't be for senior officers on a flagship today, let alone the 23rd century.) But they are being given a challenge that requires change.


The idea of making peace with the Klingons hits a nerve in Kirk, and he reacts with verbal violence. The prejudiced comments in this script that belied their years of holding different attitudes troubled the cast (Nichelle Nichols refused to say one line, and probably James Doohan should have refused one of his.) Kirk’s initial vengeful attitude justifiably bothered William Shatner. The hostility the crew feels right to the end is overheated, the movie’s biggest flaw. But the emotions and prejudices that lie beneath our conscious beliefs is a theme that plays out in various ways in this film. They also mirror the Cold War with embarrassing accuracy: prejudice is a ready tool for demonizing the Other.

Shatner got through this revealing moment (it shocks Spock, and in one take it even shocks Kirk) and then he played a lot of colors in Kirk’s self-examination, especially in his mono-Captain’s Logs. Though outrageously and self-consciously comic on one level, Kirk fighting the shapeshifter in his own image—Kirk against Kirk—mirrors his inner conflict.

In a key scene in Spock’s cabin late in the film, Kirk points out that he’s a great one for acting before thinking, while Spock is a great one for logic. This describes their roles in this story (and throughout the series), as Kirk careens from one adventure to another, and Spock becomes Sherlock on the Enterprise. Yet in many ways, Spock has never been so active and energized.

That’s partly because his relationship to logic has changed, as we learn in that early scene in his cabin with Valeris. We’d already seen her first look when she saw him enter the bridge—it was so sexual as to be almost predatory. Something was going on between them under their Vulcan masks.

Valeris believes in absolute logic, yet everything she does shows repressed emotion, including ambition and the need to please her officers. She examines a Marc Chagall painting on Spock’s wall, “The Expulsion from Paradise,” a reminder to Spock (he says) that “all things end.” She invokes logic to oppose a peace treaty, but Spock succinctly expresses the outcome of his journey, which we’ve watched through the series and five features: “Logic is the beginning of wisdom,” he insists, “not the end.”

But Spock’s journey isn’t over, as no one’s ever is. He has ignored his feelings blinding him to the character of Valeris, and his anger erupts in several scenes of violence (especially for Spock), which are partly reactions to realizing his own hubris. Dealing with the unconscious, the shadow within, is a never-ending process.

But there is another element to that scene between Spock and Kirk.

"Second star to the left...

...and straight on till morning."

Second Star to the Left…

As Leonard Nimoy has described it, there was a moment in this scene--when Spock asks Kirk if they are so old and inflexible that they have outlived their usefulness-- that he felt was also Nimoy asking Shatner that same question.

The relationship of actors and characters is an inevitable part of this movie. Throughout it, the Enterprise crew continued the breezy camaraderie and quick ease of interplay that developed during Star Trek IV, an informality that was as much about veteran actors relaxing in their roles as about veteran shipmates. Suggested in other moments, this doubleness hits home in the movie’s final scenes.

The adventure is over, Kirk and his crew are revived and ready to go on. But Uhura receives the order for the Enterprise to return to be decommissioned. Spock provides a classic Spock/Data “if I were human” profanity, and Chekov asks softly: “Course heading, Captain?”

Kirk looks deep into space. His line, which Nick Meyer apparently added at the last minute, is taken from J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. “Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.” It’s the directions to Neverland, where boys remain boys forever, engaged in adventures.

Kirk says it with impudence, wonder and a smile. Then the Enterprise does what the Enterprise always does to properly end a Star Trek movie: it starts off on its next mission. Only this time it doesn’t disappear in a warp of color. It moves slowly into the corona of a star—it simply fades into the light, into the infinity of legend. Not going anywhere in particular, the Enterprise just disappears into everywhere.

Star Trek VI has its problems and inconsistencies. But basically it is an efficient, satisfying final journey for this crew—the proper ending that the Next Generation crew got on TV but not to their films. This final scene caps it perfectly.

After Kirk’s order and before the final fade, the crew looks forward, and the actors look at us. It is the moment when the actors and the characters become one.

This identification is fitting, because these actors did not just play these characters—in large measure, they created these characters. In a TV series, most writers and directors come for an episode and go. (The exceptions for Star Trek were principally Roddenberry, Coons and D.C. Fontana.) Producers control the big arcs and continuity, but they aren’t on the set every day. The people who deal with the details that accrue a character and, in many ways, a Star Trek universe, are the cast and crew.

Actors are always advocates for their characters—so much so that it’s a theatrical in-joke. But in a series, actors have the institutional memory—how their character responded to a similar situation, what previous episodes established, etc. They inhabit the character. They look for creative ways to explore new nuances. But given the time pressure and the toll on human energy, the character begins to take on more characteristics of the actor. (And sometimes, actors begin to take on the characteristics of their character.)

Writers pick up on what the actors are doing. But sometimes, actors have to defend their characters, from writers, directors and studio executives. These actors had to do this for nearly every movie, including this one.

Leonard Nimoy’s role in creating Spock is perhaps the most obvious and most documented, and Captain Kirk is clearly the work of William Shatner. Characters with less to do are in some ways more difficult to create, but particularly in the movies, the other cast members went beyond mechanical icons to substantive characters. That they did so with a few scenes, a few words and gestures, is pretty remarkable. As actors, they all embodied Star Trek.

A series of TV shows and movies is co-created, and the actors are usually pivotal, because they make it real for the audience. The Star Trek actors got the fan mail, and they learned what was working. A combination of writing, how the actors played the scenes, and the actors noticing the fan response (according to DeForest Kelley) led to building what became the basic dynamic of the Kirk-Spock-McCoy relationship, which became central to Star Trek storytelling.

Some of these actors did not get to do as much with their characters as they could have, and perhaps the new actors will have better opportunities. But the work they did get to do established these characters. They modeled diversity in a professional setting for a time that had little of this diversity in reality. These characters have been criticized because they didn't demonstrate much conflict with each other. But they became models for millions precisely because they treated each other with respect, loyalty and affection.

..And Straight On Till Morning

Now for the first time those characters are about to be played by other actors. Star Trek is now truly in the hands of a next generation: For the first time, none of the producers, writers or actors (except Leonard Nimoy) learned Star Trek directly from Gene Roddenberry and his first collaborators.

These actors had other common experiences that contributed to forging the Star Trek future. They had strong backgrounds in theatre. William Shatner got his first breaks playing Shakespeare. Leonard Nimoy acted on the stage before and after the Star Trek series; DeForest Kelley acted in theatre on both coasts. After studying with famed acting teacher Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, James Doohan did repertory theatre. Years later, Walter Koenig also studied and performed at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse. George Takei was an actor on the theatre track—not film—at UCLA. Nichelle Nichols was a musical theatre performer, as well as a singer and dancer.

This theatre experience was important, because with small budgets, Star Trek was all about story and acting. Leonard Nimoy emphasizes this, and William Shatner has observed that on the TV series they were essentially putting on Greek plays every week, dealing with complex but essential human questions. Their experience and theatrical instincts helped shape stories as well as their own characters.

They all grew up with movies as a magical experience shared in a magical environment: the movie palaces. Many of them recall the immersion and inspiration of Saturday matinees, in environments separated from the “real” world, where their heroes were ten feet tall on the big screen.

When they came together to create the crew of the Enterprise, they brought with them real life experience that pertained to their characters and the stories they played, particularly concerning justice, empathy and principle.

As a boy, George Takei was in U.S. internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. He remembers the searchlight following him to the latrine at night. The poverty Walter Koenig experienced as a child colored his attitudes for many years. For Nichelle Nichols, bigotry wasn’t an abstract topic—she lived through racial prejudice, and only a decade before Trek went on the air she was denied a hotel room because of her color, while on tour as a singer. She also dealt with an attempted rape, and at a time when prosecutions were much less likely to be brought or to be successful, she testified against a powerful man in his own city and the jury convicted him.

As a boy, William Shatner was taunted and got into fights because he was Jewish. Leonard Nimoy, whose Jewish parents literally escaped from Russia (his mother hid in a hay wagon), had his own problems fitting in, and he felt alienated enough that playing an extraterrestrial came more or less naturally.

War, the military, danger, duty, courage—none of these story elements were abstractions to James Doohan, who had been a soldier storming the Normandy beaches on D-Day, and had visible scars from enemy gunfire (carefully kept off-camera). Similarly, Gene Roddenberry didn't just write about flying a ship-- he had flown bombers in combat. He and writer/producer Gene Coon didn't write antiwar stories from theory; they had both experienced real war. Roddenberry didn't just write about grace under pressure--he survived plane crashes and helped to rescue survivors.

Their lives didn’t end with Star Trek. They’ve been actors, directors, producers and writers on other projects. They pursued other arts and other ways of doing good. Nichelle Nichols recruited real astronauts for NASA, especially women and people of color. George Takei served on local government commissions and became a political player in Los Angeles, and more recently a gay rights activist. Leonard Nimoy marched to protest the Vietnam war and has remained politically active. William Shatner works for his charities and causes, including the environment.

As even casual fans must know by now, there was conflict among them (which occasionally still surfaces.) But Nichelle Nichols, Jimmy Doohan, Walter Koenig and George Takei formed close bonds over the years, as did Shatner and Nimoy. DeForest Kelley was beloved by all. Let’s stipulate that none of them was or is perfect.

I never met Kelley or Doohan, both departed now, though I attended the 2004 convention honoring Doohan, his last. I was doing a story for the New York Times and asked a number of Trek people about him. Without exception they praised him, and several—including Nick Meyer and LeVar Burton--used the same words: “I love Jimmy Doohan!”

I also haven’t met Shatner, but Leonard Nimoy was generous with his time, and after the story appeared we emailed back and forth about a publishing matter—for a brief moment it felt like Spock was advising me. I’ve spoken with Walter Koenig several times—he’s thoughtful, funny and forthright. Nichelle Nichols is a great lady, gracious, generous and down to earth. She provided me with the surprise of a memorable moment—as soon as I introduced myself to her in a dimly lit ballroom before a convention dinner, she introduced me to the man next to her. He turned out to be Neil Armstrong.

I heard George Takei at the Star Trek 40th anniversary convention in Seattle, describing his experiences in the internment camp in the context of urging the audience to be politically involved. I met him afterwards, and he showed me a photo album a fan had just given him, from a UCLA student theatre production in which he’d played the lead.

The Great Bird Says Goodbye

Those were my second and third conventions. My first was many years before, in 1976 in Washington, where I met Gene Roddenberry. I was supposed to interview him for a scruffy alternative weekly, but Majel Roddenberry was with him, with those incredible blue eyes and all tanned in a backless summer dress. I was so dazzled I forgot my questions. Gene and I did talk but I was useless. I saw Majel at the Scotty convention, but those eyes got to me again and I never told her this story. Now she’s gone, though her voice will once again be heard, as the Enterprise computer in the new movie.

That Star Trek itself didn’t end is largely due to the continuing involvement of Majel, GR and members of the original cast. They were advocates at conventions from the beginning, especially in the years when no new Star Trek was being made. Over the years, Majel and the actors formed a bond with Star Trek fans that goes both ways. “In a society with so much violence and stupidity,” Walter Koenig told me, “ the conventions are an oasis, where you can find some genuinely good people who believe in humanity and respect the rights of others.” “Because the fans are loyal to Gene’s dream, “ Nichelle Nichols said to me, “we are loyal to the fans.”

Gene Roddenberry died shortly after Star Trek VI was completed. Nichelle wrote that GR was more involved with VI than he had been with the previous few films, but he had strong objections to parts of it. On the DVD, Trek producer Ralph Winters said he escorted GR to a private pre-release screening. He was in a wheelchair, with a blanket for warmth in the air-conditioned theatre. Winter left him there for awhile, and came back for him at the end. He reports that GR enjoyed the film. One of Shatner’s books leaves a different impression (he claimed Roddenberry called his lawyer to demand changes.)

It could be that they are both right. I imagine that even though parts of it made him angry, he did in fact enjoy watching it. He probably knew this was the last original cast movie, and he probably realized the precarious state of his own health. If he was left alone in that theatre, it was just him and the characters he started on their life’s journeys. He was there in the dark, as he had been so many times since his boyhood, looking up at heroes on the screen. Except these were heroes that to some significant degree came from within him, and were by now part of him.

He saw them foil a plot against peace, and restore the faith of a visionary peacemaker. He saw them gather together on the bridge of the Enterprise, going off together forever into the brightness of a star. When they looked out, they were looking at him, who brought them into the world, into the universe of story. I can’t help but believe that at some moment in that dark screening room, GR and Star Trek said their goodbyes.